Telemarketer selling Credit Card Insurance for Citibank. The product was a scam. The credit cards customers slammed the phone on you. The management was dumb and rude. All of my co-workers were miserable. Lasted about a month.

But–the company who fired me for reporting sabotage is bankrupt. The place where they harassed me out to get a kid the job, has lost most of its university contracts. The boss who liked to pitch screaming fits after lunch is in prison for ten years, and the dishonest company was put out of business in two major cities.

Yes, I had something to do with all of it. I’m still trying to fight the bunch who ran me out to get the overtime, and so are some of their other ex-employees. Don’t ever let the sob’s get away with it, if it takes you 20 years.

Sure, that’s important. But I doubt it would have helped in your case.

The resentment was not that you were a favorite, but because you were excited about the job and did a good job. By working more diligently and with enthusiasm, you made the others look bad. There is no personal relationship you can establish with workers who think like that.

Had you been cozier with them, I’d wager that would have told you to do less work and not make them look bad in comparison.

I agree with everyone else re: doing well just means more work. I did amazingly at my entry level position, so I got moved somewhere harder. Did well there, and I got a real promotion. Well, I picked those two jobs up so quickly, I became the go-to person for helping out whichever department is busiest.

The nice part is that I have learned more in two years than any of my co-workers. The downside is I am ALWAYS busy. Month after month of 10-12 hr shifts, 7 days a week, etc. My paychecks are lovely, but I want sleep!

Then, I get a nastygram email from the wife asking for me to fill out my health insurance form ASAP. I noted that the enrollment form was photocopied, and the signature line clearly stated, “I have read and understand the conditions on the reverse side of this form.” So I made the mistake of asking for the reverse side of the form… I mean, I’m a lawyer, I should know better than to blindly sign things (and we also represent credit card companies, so it’s doubly true). The enrollment form did not come with any benefits guide, or even the “benefits at a glance” sheet. So I asked for one of those as well.

The email I received stated, “I hope you are as thorough when doing your work here & that I won’t have to follow up with you again on anything I ask of you in the future.” Apparently, my interest in my personal well-being and benefits at a job is not the most important thing? I immediately started applying for other positions; we’ll see how long I have to stay.

Unfortunately, the other workers were all older high school guys and a manager who was maybe 19 (female, although oblivious). The job itself was terrible, but I could deal with it until I found something better. That is, until the “hazing” started. Two of the guys who worked there thought it would be funny to lock me in the freezer, spray me with the hose, and other stupid things. Finally, they got the bright idea to climb up on the roof and dump a bucket of water on me when I was leaving one night. It was somewhat cold outside and I was wearing a white undershirt since the uniform smelled awful. So I was soaked, in a white tee, and completely humiliated when the guys pointed out that you could see through it and laughed hysterically. The manager saw it and also laughed. She didnt’ to anythign to help me cover myself or dry off. I got in my car and drove home crying. When I got home my mom called the manager and asked what had happened b/c I was too ashamed to tell her. The corporate office did an investigation regarding sexual harrassment, but I never went back there again.

I’m not sure what I learned… Don’t work with immature people? Don’t expect a manager to take care of you b/c they are in a position of authority? There are mean people in the world who do cruel things to others for their own entertainment? I’m just glad I was smart enough not to go back and sumbit to more torture.

Learned a lot. People are more important then jobs. Design for the grunts as they are the biggest sink of money in an operation but play to the suits. If you employ 1000+ people to watch for a dozen “bad apples” within your own company you need to redesign your business. If there is a big gap between most workers and your top producers do something good for you top producers they may even stay a bit longer.

“It seems like you’re glaring at me. Is there some reason for that?” (looking them straight in the eyes and not breaking eye contact)

In my experience, there are a lot of scientists who do their best to be reasonable and fair, but who don’t have very good people skills or management skills. So they may be oblivious to a problem that seems obvious to you, but if you point it out, they might be willing to help.

Of course, there are other scientists who are just abusive bullies, and with them, there’s not much you can do. But unless you’re absolutely sure that an abusive bully is what you’re up against, you’re usually better off pointing out that there’s a problem than just assuming that the boss doesn’t care.

When you do your jobs in a new job position, immediately after doing them it’s a good idea to touch base with your bosses and go over what you did. It prevents them having to expend energy “supervising” you and gives you an opportunity to learn more and do a better job, while increasing your credibility with them.

When your batches went bad, the thing to do was express honest remorse and concern for the loss of resources and loss of time for their work (even if you think it wasn’t your fault–sometimes you have to express remorse, even when it seems it’s not really your fault.. Then ask if they would be willing to go over the process you used to make the batches, and step them step by step exactly through what you did. In doing so, if there is a lack of standard procedure, you become a partner in helping them address it, instead of the “unreliable employee”. By your care and attention to detail, it will defuse their ire. Then incite their curiousity by wondering out loud, “I’m wondering how this could have happened, since we’ve gone over the entire procedure and it seems to be correct. Maybe what we’re assuming the ingredients are is incorrect. Could there be the wrong stuff in some of these marked containers?”

don’t let the shlubs (co-workers) get you down, at least make them work for it.

If you’ve communicated with the bosses as above, and you suspect that you are being sabotaged, schedule a meeting with your bosses to “discuss something with them”. And go over your concerns about the workplace environment.

As to the “co-workers”, there is nothing wrong with telling them directly how pathetic their negative attitude toward their work is.

Admittedly, that’s a lot for a 19 year old to deal with.

I think you might be missing an important piece. Not only do you have to do an excellent job, you have to communicate with your boss about it. Give them an update about what you have done for them and bring them any questions you have about what else you could do. If you do that, you will be recognized individually. You will also likely begin to gain leverage to gain more interesting responsibilities or otherwise give you leverage in your workplace. When you own the results and associate them to yourself by giving updates to your boss, you will very likely get better results for yourself than by just doing “the letter of the law” quietly.

I made over 3x minimum wage as a college student working some random hours. Granted, more than half of my four years there were working at 0400 (and then 0300 for awhile)… but I didn’t have class before the sun came up, so it worked.

Management put me through a bunch of crap, especially when I took maternity leave and came back a full-abled, untrained and vested employee who they couldn’t fire, but couldn’t force into remedial training either. Amazing how maternity leave falls into one of those categories where you really aren’t allowed to discriminate…. and their lawyers told them they couldn’t fire me for refusing to work outside of my assigned hours for double the amount of time for a week on 24 hours notice (though they didn’t care at all about my about-to-graduate student status).

I quit two months after I went back because my husband got a great job and we moved… and I decided to stay home with my daughter. However, I’m glad for the real lessons I learned about people. When I left, several airport employees actually came up to me and said they wished I’d stay because I was the only TSA employee who treated them like a person.

1. Don’t date your coworkers. When I broke up w/my bf/lab peer, he sabotaged my work. We couldn’t prove it but he was asked to resign and did. I also learned a LOT about working with others and dealing with conflict. (And now I giggle every time I see ’sabotage/horseplay’ as a root cause investigation choice.)

2. Stand up for yourself, but know where you stand; don’t rock the boat unless it really counts and be careful how you do it. A small family-owned business took away our dental benefits and I complained loudly about this at an offsite, public lunch. I was fired because they didn’t like my attitude and thought it was disrespectful, even though I confirmed they thought I did a great job doing my actual work. I learned to dust myself off and start again, and actually found a much better job through the unemployment office, one which directly led to my AWESOME job at an AWESOME company later, where I finally get paid what I’m worth and am rewarded richly for being an excellent performer. I have bitten my tongue at later jobs after learning that lesson and also learned how to respectfully tell employees about hard decisions instead of just slamming them with bad news.

How do people feel about the ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) Program started by Best Buy? The premise is they hire you to do a certain job, pay you a certain wage, and it doesn’t matter if it takes you 8 minutes or 8 hours. I, for one, think it is totally the way to go. Productive people aren’t punished by having work loaded on them, and you also don’t have to “play the game” by sitting in the office until 5PM playing minesweeper just to look like your doing something.

Trent – I think a ROWE article may be worth writing about and discussing..